Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing

The award-winning author of God’s Hotel offers a radical reimagining of how we practice medicine

In the quarter-century that Victoria Sweet has been a doctor, “healthcare” has replaced medicine, “providers” (vastly outnumbered by administrators) look at their laptops more than at their patients, and the ruthless pursuit of efficiency has vanquished not only trust and intimacy but also often the effectiveness of treatment.

Victoria Sweet knows that there is an alternative way, because she has lived and practiced it. In her new book, she reflects with compassion, wit, and profound insight on experiences drawn from her time in medical school, internship, residencies, and beyond, to show us how she arrived at the philosophy of “slow medicine” in which she has been pioneer and inspiration. Via unforgettable stories of the patients and mentors who instilled its vital lessons in her, she paints a vision of medicine that responds to bodies rather than data, that appreciates the profession as craft as well as science, and that alchemizes “fast” and “slow” into a much more humane, sustainable, and successful way of caring, and being cared for.